Comment by ghusto
5 days ago
> Europe would first have to invest "tens if not hundreds of billions" themselves in order to develop any viable replacements and that is very unlikely to ever happen
It's _been_ happening. Why do you think something that delivers jobs, boosts the economy, and is an easier and easier political and popular sell everyday, is unlikely?
> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters
That's also happening. It's just that we're not as gung-ho about doing things at any cost.
Unless your plan is to pay SpaceX to launch this constellation, 'it' (developing both launch and a constellation to rival starlink) has not been happening in europe
When I was checking earlier, it seems some European projects will use SpaceX to launch. Probably makes sense economically.
From what I saw Europe has no plan to launch a large constellation that could become an alternative to Starlink. The ambition apparently does not exist.
IRIS² and Ariane 6 would like a word with you.
Ariane is already launching Amazon satellites, but IRIS is many years away from being anything.